Dojji

All the best Moon. you're one of the good guys around here.

There's justifiable concerns that Lin isn't going to hold up offensively over a full 162. If he does, he's a potential All-Star, but his offensive body of work in the minors leaves that in serious doubt. For most of Lin's minor league career until he took a step forward in 2017, hitting is something that other people did. He's shown much more success in the last 2 years, so maybe he's made some legitimate progress, I guess we'll have to see. The injury really set Hernandez back but he's definitely on my radar. Honestly I'm still holding a candle for Pedey. He deserves one lasts chance.

No NL team in the league would balk at JD martinez as an everyday OF. This isn't Manny we're talking about. He isn't even all that bad as a defensive corner OF, he grades out at maybe a tick or two below average, which his bat is more than good enough to justify. The only reason he didn't play more outfield here is he's completely outclassed by our regulars at every outfield position he plays. But that's true of nearly every other outfielder in Major League Baseball, so no sane person would hold it against him. I wouldn't be surprised if this was experimented with, after all first base is where our biggest hole is right now. But I also don't see an incredible need for this.

Moonslav for one. He's been riding the "lowball Kimbrel" bandwagon for years. He'll call it something else, but he doesn't value elite closing because of his Jamesian predelictions, and doesn't agree with the decision to make a big splash for a closer for the same reason and that's coloring his arguments now that the team has a valid excuse to get rid of a guy he never wanted here in the first place. He won't admit it. He might not even realize it. Human biases just work like that.

Devers is a big kid and he's going to fill out. I think it's 50 50 he needs to slide over no matter what we do. Devers actually reminds me a fair bit of a young Miggy Cabrera, who could stick at third at first because of the energy of youth, and clung to the position for awhile afterward because the offense made up for the defense but as he got older needed to get off the hot corner and play 1B/DH for the most part. I think the Sox realize this, which is why 1: we have been reluctant to block 1B with a professional all weather starter 2: we have signed Eduardo Nunez.

Pretty sure you can get Beltre for a 1 year contract too. He's at that stage of his career. He'll come in, try to win a World Series on a stacked roster, and if it doesn't work he has the choice to re-up and try again or move on. It's a good idea IMHO.

That's why the idea of a rental contract on Adrian Beltre appeals to me. Bring him in and have Devers switch between third and first. He's young, he can handle it. Having Beltre part timing on the hot corner for a year or two can't possibly hurt Devers' development and he may wind up benefitting from Beltre's vast experiencce. And I'd honestly trust Beltre over Pearce to have a strong 2019 campaign.

Since the 2016 Astros missed the postseasion, I'm going to assume you are referring to the 2017 team and their closer Ken Giles, who wasn't great but had a career year the season that the Astros won it all with him. And I'll note that Giles regressed heavily and lost the closer's role this year, is now out of Houston entirely, and in fact 5 different relievers got multiple saves this year for the Astros, meaning the search for a proper closer is ongoing. If I recall correctly we pulled some highly unpleasant surprises on the Astros in late innings over the course of the series that made a large difference in the outcome. Pretty good evidence that the lack of a consistent top end back of the bullpen can cost a team with dynastic ambitions. I think the struggles of the Astros to find a solid closer combined with the fact that we ambushed them a couple times late in games, makes a pretty fair bit of progress towards proving MY point. I'm going to ask for some evidence of that How many did so in the modern era? More to the point, how many were still tinkering with their closer's role by the time the postseason rolled around (in other words, how many teams had multiple relievers with multiple saves in the postseason?) It's one thing to have some people auditioning in season to make the role their own, it's another entirely to actually try to close by committee. NOBODY does that.

You're absolutely right. Now put another pitcher in the same position. One that didn't have the raw stuff of a Kimbrel. Closers are going to have bad stretches, and there is no GOOD time for a closer to struggle, but if you don't have the best talent you can get in the closer's role, those heart attack saves become blown saves pretty fast. I mean I honestly heard people suggesting Joe Kelly for closer. You thought Kimbrel was an adventure, I actually heartily encourage this team to try Joe Kelly in that role, just so I can sit back and laugh.

This is what I thought the actual problem was. You have no issue with Kimbrel. You don't like closers. It's probably the single stupidest thing Bill James ever said, and his fanatics treat it as dogmatic truth just like everything else. Yes, a closer's value isn't that great in the regular season, at least to the extent that the difference in wins between a mediocre closer and an elite one is only 2-3 games or so Bad stretches and small hiccups and the occasional blown game are so much noise over 162 games, and they tend to average out and not cost a team too badly, especially in the Wild Card era. Jamesian dogma is right about that in theory, on paper. But time and time and time and time again it has been proven that the value and necessity of a good closer rises significantly in the postseason. Teams that cheap out on the closer's role or just wind up with inadequate talent there have a heck of a time closing out playoff series and that one game where your guy is having a bad night goes from just one game out of 162+, to Schiraldi blowing game 6 of the 1986 World Series. or worse, the experience the Mets had with the normally fairly dependable Jeurys Familia in the 2015 Series Because real talk here, Familia is almost exactly what you guys are talking about when you talk about bringing in cost controlled, second tier closers. And we all saw how that ended. I mean we actually had a great closer, and finishing out the 9th inning was still more of an adventure than my blood pressure wanted it to be. Imagine if we were trying to get through some of the very best talent in Major League Baseball, in this year where unlike so many the actual best teams were the ones competing in the playoffs, with the Andrew Baileys of the world all we had to try to put the lid on a tight game. Our margin of error in those close and late games isn't so huge that I'm going to be all for deliberately taking a bite out of it in order to not even save all that much of someone else's money. If you aren't trying to win a World Series, there's no particular reason to go overboard looking for a top closer. But when on earth is that ever true for the Boston Red Sox?

You see, Moonslav, we've had this conversation before regarding the closer's role, with people on your side of the argument all too eager to move on from the contemptible familiarity of Papelbon, and try new option s not so much because new options were objectively better but more because they were tired of the old one and used parsimony to excuse their boredom. And if we hadn't gotten incredibly lucky with Koji Uehara in the following season that decision would have ranked among the greatest boondoggles in recent Red Sox history, right along with another decision in the same year, to hire Bobby Valentine as manager. The bullpen was in freefall until Koji stood up. And there was no particular reason why he should have been expected to stand up, or that his body shouldn't have fallen apart almost immediately on him when he did. Again, just to drive the point home -- we got stupidly lucky. And meanwhile, Jonathan Papelbon was worth every penny of the contract he ended up signing with Philidelphia. My question, in a nutshell, is this. How much are you prepared to risk in order to pay slightly less for an inferior closer? The elite relief arms always get paid, meaning you're going to be trying to pull a gem out of your butt or you're going to try to promote a setup guy. Either way the odds of actually upgrading at the closer's role over a guy who's been top 5 each of the last few seasons are microscopic, and the decision fails a basic cost-benefit analysis. If I have to weigh the costs and benefits of sticking with a guy who's still getting it done and gambling he continues effective over the next 3-4 years over the odds that a career middle reliver suddenly catches lightning in a bottle, or that a guy picked up off the trash heap doesn't turn out to be actually trash, I know which odds I favor. We aren't the Tampa Bay Rays. We don't have to settle for cut-rate closers.

Not an actual need, setup innings were not a problem for us this season and I don't see that changing. With the arms we already have this is more of a luxury and far less pressing of a need than keeping the closer's role strong. As it is we'll probably break camp with a starter in the bullpen. A depth arm we can stash in AAA is the sum total of our needs in this area. You're not going to get much of an upgrade on what we have now for just money. The free agent market at first base is HELLA weak this year. So if you're going to have to promote from within or acquire a guy in trade, 1B is not the reason not to spend money on closing. Where is your evidence that this is happening to Kimbrel? I Lemme let you in on a secret. It's a lot easier to put up with a closer in decline than it is to find one when all the good ones are on other peoples' payrolls. One gets you a few years of a Jonathan Papelbon who's still strong willed and intelligent but has lost a bit off his heater and isn't quite the unstoppable force he once was. The other gets you Andrew Bailey. I know what I'd choose given those choices.

What needs would those be? The only other position with a question mark on it right now is first base. We'll probably break camp with starters in the bullpen, Brandon Workman wouldn't be fighting for a job in any other baseball franchise in the entire freaking universe, our catcher tandem isn't going anywhere, our outfield is legendary, our infield is improving defensively and likely to at least hold steady offensively. So tell me, where are all these other needs? Sure in the next few years we're going to have to pay some people, but the dead money coming off the books is going to help us there so there's no excuse for being penny wise and pound foolish on a position that everyone likes to pretend doesn't matter right up until the moment that it suddenly does. Let me tell you what's going to happen if Kimbrel walks: The "closer conversation" is going to dominate the board for the entire next season plus. Because replacing an elite closer is NOT easy, you can NOT just plug any random arm in there, and if you have any doubts on the subject just ask the 2015 Mets how unimportant the closer's role is, especially once the playoffs roll around and every lead matters. I mean if you're not planning to win the World Series, sure, go nuts. play fast and loose with the closer's role and see what it gets you. But we are planning to win the World Series, and I'm beginning to feel like I'm the only guy in the room who remembers why Keith Foulke was on the roster in 2004 -- and what the inability to hold a 1 run lead meant to the team in 2003.

Not even close. His walks were up a tick but every other number was within striking distance of his career averages. Don't get carried away in the narrative. Even with a bit of wildness this year, Kimbrel was in the top 3-4 closers out there, and replacing him with "a better one" is a ridiculous idea. Sometimes I think people want to have all the talent in the world and pay for none of it. What am I saying, of course they do, we all do, but what I mean is people actually think they can get it.

That sounds very Belichickian and makes me very excited.

If electing a Republican to office earns that level of invective, you might have a problem. I prescribe a chill pill and a heavy dose of perspective.

Forgive me, my setting on the subtlety meter is somewhere between "fists made of literally ham" and "bull in the china shop."

Let's not pretend we won those playoff series in a walk. Things always look easier after they've been accomplished. Those were some very good teams we humiliated, it's worth noting that although our World Series opponent was probably the weakest team we faced this year, any of the three were at least potentially capable of turning the tables on us Point being the boys needed to execute to get this done, they could make a lot of noise on talent alone, but so could most of their opponents in the playoffs. It was a championship, not a coronation, in other words.

If Pablo was productive and played, he might have even been worth the money. Sadly Pablo's "belts busted" statistic widely exceeds any other statistical contribution he made while here. He would have been a bad deal if we got him for free. Not comparable to an actually highly productive player you go a couple ticks past your spending limit for.

Not indefinitely. Sooner or later it comes to a head and you have to decide which to sacrifice to sustain the other. Or as it says in the Bible, "no man can serve two Masters." Sooner or later, you do have to choose. It is possible to assemble a core and have reserves to replenish it for a run of 5-10 years, but at the end of the day, attrition, money, mistakes and ordinary random chance is going to deplete your big league roster unless you're pulling out all the stops to sustain it -- and frequently will do so even if you are doing everything within your power to prevent it. We know because this happened to us between 2009 and 2015 and contributed heavily to some of the terrible seasons we experienced at that time, a lot of the blame for which it has to be said goes to St. Theo. This is especially true because MLB has been closing off the ways rich teams can gain advantage in the player development market by saturating their farm with IFAs. It used to be that both big money teams and small market teams that were going all in on player development (pertinent examples of the latter being Tampa Bay and KC) could make a splash in the international market to give their farm system a much needed shot in the arm, but that is much more closely regulated now in favor of parity, the Braves just paid the price for not realizing that the cowboy era of IFA signings is over and the Dodgers might be joining them. It should surprise no one that part of how Theo and BC built their great farm was exploiting the wildcat era in the international free agent market, that's simply where the market inefficiency was at the time. That option is no longer as open as it used to be and the playing field is much more level, making it far harder than it used to be to have your cake and eat it too, as BC found out the hard way. Kimmi, I'm sorry, you still have your head in an era that ended a couple years back and is probably not returning. It is NOT always going to be possible to make a huge splash in IFA to supplement a weak draft like Theo did several times when he was here. The challenge level is going up and if you don't evaluate and stack your proprities to match the current reality, it's going to bite you in the butt like it did for us in the first half of this decade. Short answer -- unless you're prepared to tank, and BC's fate is a pretty good evidence that we are not, setting up the future is what you do after you're built to win now. If you try to do both, you will wind up doing neither.

Disagree. Kimbrel had an offf year by his standards this year and still did more than enough to prevent the closer's role from becoming an issue. Every closer will blow a game or two and have a few other games nearly get out of hand. That's true of anyone. Kimbrel might have been a heart attack closer last year but he was an asset, not a liability, and there's little reason to expect that to change. Heck, he might improve closer to career levels. You are not going to find an upgrade to that guy on the FA list. I don't care if you're personally comfortable with him, he is objectively one of the best closers out there and you aren't going to manage to upgrade at closer by replacing him with any currently available option, internal or external.

Just giving your argument a proper consistency check

What it comes down to is a juggling of priorities. If you have priorities other than consistently winning, you won't win. And if ownership has a priority of consistently winning, and you don't share those priorities, you get fired. You can maintain other secondary priorities to a point, and building a good talent pipeline is a fine secondary goal,. but at some point the secondary goals give way to the primary obligation of giving ownership winning teams. This is where Ben Cherington failed. His #1 goal was something other than winning at the big league level and also something other than the owner's own priorities, and BC was tone-deaf to the concerns of Henry when the team started going off track. Henry was laying a lot of money out for a bad product on the field while Ben Cherington hoarded prospects. That was not what ownership wanted, or what they needed to make money on this team, so he was fired, simple as that. It was an example of misplaced priorities literally putting the cart in front of the horse -- prioritizing the delivery method over the payload, if you will

With or without Mookie Betts, this Red Sox team makes the playoffs, so I'm not sure where that leaves us

I keep hearing that from Boston teams. They're better prepared. Partly because Boston teams are in the playoffs A LOT, but it makes you wonder. We all know one Boston franchise more famous than any other for meticulous preparation. Are the other franchises taking lessons from the Bill Belichick school of how to manage a sports franchise? I suppose considering the extended success of the Patriots, you'd either have to be particularly stupid or particularly stubborn not to.